How do water butts work & do I need one?

[bbcessex]

Morning all.
I know I could google but thought I could ask here for more context 😎

I’m working in the basis of having water stored for drinking... do you have a water butt for this purpose & how do you use it?

Getting one but don't yet have one. My understanding is that there needs to be some way of draining off excess and the water can only - unless you just want to collect grey water - come from a gutter/pipe fed by rainwater.
My intention is mostly for gardening but I would be happy to drink it once I had filtered and purified it.
I have lived in a country where managing grey water was an everyday thing so I'm confident I could handle that separately as a situation.

Thanks bellinisurge

I think if we got one it would be to collect water to subsequently drink so I’m not sure I know what to do there...

Absolutely reasonable to use it for drinking. I'd just want to be sure and boil it before drinking. Not because of the rain but because of what it is stored in and how long it has been sitting there.

I have many water butts, and would never drink any of the water stored in them. Unless I also had some sort of purifier.

All mine gets used on plants.

Can I ask why? The cost of a glass of drinking water from the tap is minimal and once you add inthe cost of boiling it, purifying it etc it's probably more expensive or at least the same.

Normally in my experience water butts are used for bigger jobs, like the garden.

In fact i think it's more expensive, a penny for a bucket of water and 2.5 to boil the kettle. Is it for somewhere you can't bring it sccess drinking water? No clue on cost of filtering systems.

Mainly just pondering for prepping purposes, in the unlikely event that drinking water supplies were ever short.

@bbcessex - until we had the harsh summer we had (moorland fires near me), I would have said we would never have a shortage of drinking water. Also, a few years ago the water in my late Mum's town was contaminated and everyone had to rely on bottled water. I was in A&E with her once and there was no water to drink except bottled stuff.
In other words, no harm in having this as a prep.

If your purpose is purely prepping then you would be better off buying large 20l food grade plastic jerry cans and filling them with tap water.

Water butts are fab but they are full of dirty water which has come off your roof and down the drainpipe. You would only drink it as a last resort and so most who have them do so for the garden (at least as their primary purpose). You could in theory filter and purify it though in an emergency.

When I lived in the Middle East, our drinking water used to come by tanker from the desalination plant to a, huge galvanised tank outside the kitchen door. Water was drawn off by the tank tap and then put through a ceramic filter, again with a tap at the bottom. It was made out of the same sort of clay like the Mason Cash bowls but the filter part wasn't glazed. Wonder if they are still available?